Transcendentalism and its Discontents

Course Description

Summary

A comprehensive survey of American Transcendentalism through the writing of its major figures (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller) as well as more overshadowed club members like Orestes Brown, Bronson Alcott and Ellery Channing. We will explore the contentious debate the movement set off among thinkers of the time and come to a keen understanding of transcendentalism not just as a philosophical ideal, but as a radical new way of living that only could have flowered in the roiling America of the 1830s and 1840s.